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Travel

﻿Cambodia and Vietnam

In April 2010 we travelled to the previous French territories of Cambodia and Vietnam: ‘French Indochina’, as they had been called when I started school; until 1954. Since then many things have changed. But of course, this has been a region of change for tens of thousands of years. Our trip ‘filled in’ areas of the map between our previous trips to India and China and did not disappoint. There is certainly a sense in which Indochina is a blend of China and India; with differences tangential to both. Both have recovered from recent conflicts of which there is still evidence everywhere, like the smell of gunpowder after fireworks.

Fiction, Recollections & News

Remembering 1967

1967 is in the news this week as it is 50 years since one of the few referendums, since the Federation of Australia in 1901, to successfully lead to an amendment to our Constitution. In this case it was to remove references to 'aboriginal natives' and 'aboriginal people'.

It has been widely claimed that these changes enabled Aboriginal Australians to vote for the first time but this is nonsense.

Opinions and Philosophy

The demise of books and newspapers

Most commentators expect that traditional print media will be replaced in the very near future by electronic devices similar to the Kindle, pads and phones. Some believe, as a consequence, that the very utility of traditional books and media will change irrevocably as our ability to appreciate them changes. At least one of them is profoundly unsettled by this prospect; that he argues is already under way.